The entire galaxy has been sent back to a dark age of science, and without knowledge or resourses to take action againts this twilight area of progress. the entire cosmos is in chaos. But then comes a man, with a promise and the means to rectify the situation.

They were coming much faster now; the random succession of numbers were flooding his cerebrum far too quickly, before he could even make heads or tails of them. They appeared disjointed, stacked; sometimes coming in at impossible four dimensional patterns that wrapped time and space around him and then collapsed into a singular, condensed fragment where past, present and future all met within an inconceivable mathematical pinpoint. And just as his eyes and mind seemed to dial in on this equation it would explode into an enigmatic spectrum of disillusion that would wrap him within a static lullaby.

What was it? Was it a binary code, a distant location? He could not tell; the state of consciousness he was currently under would not permit him to do so; and subsequently, distinguishing these incoherent patterns proved impossible.

Then came the lash of pain across his face; this was another factor that was playing in. Just when the cryptic motif seemed steady enough for him to even remotely concentrate on, the sudden onslaught of an unhinged ache would send it back to unrecognizable proportions. He needed to act, pull himself together and out of the phantasmal stupor he had fallen under. For reasons he could not perceive, he knew if he stayed in this disconnected trance he would ultimately die.

Voices; was it one, two, ten, a thousand? The range and pitch of them made discernment a nightmare. Some seemed closer to him than others; the ones that were distant, sounded funneled and under a strange falsetto of some sort. The furthest reaching ones spoke of things he could not understand; at times speaking in patterns and color, adding yet another slant of difficulty to the already present numerical patterns that stretched out before him, into the most remote spaces of his mind's eye.

The closer ones did somehow seem all too familiar, though they brought him no comfort. Something, somewhere within himself said they posed a greater threat to him than that of the diabolic, mysterious patterns that were playing out before him.

Get up! he heard himself say. But was it him that said it? There seemed to be another voice; one that spoke simultaneously with him, through him. For reasons he could not begin to explain or sense he knew he must listen, obey this celestial guide. Get up now! he/it spoke. And yet again, an unbridled pain struck his face! You must act now! he/it told himself once more!

Then a pain he had never known or experienced before was felt; a hot, burning pain penetrated his gut. With that, his eyes were open!

His first reaction was to grab for what was causing him the horrendous pang in his abdomen; however, his hands seemed to be firmly secured in place above his head and he found it impossible to move them.

Next, out of pure instinct he looked down at his belly. There, buried to hilt, was what appeared to be a crudely fashioned knife of some sort. His feet kicked and squirmed uncontrollably; he retched. Then he saw a hand firmly grip the handle, and slowly remove the blade. The pain that followed was almost unbearable, he screamed in the throes of agony. It took all of his inner most reserves to not let his body give in to the terrific hurt he was experiencing, sending him back to a state of dismal slumber which would only result in his death. His glassed over eyes were just able to follow the hand that had retrieved the buried knife from his stomach. With blurred vision he located the hand, to the joining arm, then to the person it was attached to.

"Well, good morning sweetheart!" cried the man that had apparently assaulted him, "thought we almost lost you there for a minute!". His mouth gave way to a cruel smile; his lips pushed back to display a mouth full of yellow, broken teeth.

"Now lookie here, I'm gonna need ya to stay wit me foew a minute. There's someone here that is just dying to talk to you!", the smell of soder gin and vyniage cabbage floated on the haggard assailant's breath; it was of a poor man's meal and a rather vile concoction at that, producing a terribly, rancid smell that would make the most strong willed man vomit by the mere smell of it. And with that, the man walked out of the only door in the room, leaving him alone.

What did they want with me? he thought. For the life of him he couldn't begin to contemplate the events that had landed him in this situation. The only thing he was certain of at the moment was that the quarters in which he presently found himself in was a death room; and if he didn't do something, and rather quickly, he would never leave this place.

He looked back up to his hands again. Above him, bolted to the ceiling ran a rusted pipe, length wise from wall to wall; perhaps part of the building's central plumbing system. He had no way of telling, but it really didn't matter much at the moment; his hands were secured to this piping by way of a rather simplistic, uncomfortable set of chains. They were digging into his wrists, slicing away at the surrounding flesh. The more he struggled, the deeper they cut.

He must have been suspended from the ceiling in this fashion for sometime now. His arms were nearly asleep and covered in a dried coat of crimson; however a fresh coat of bright, red blood was streaming continuously from his wounds. He didn't know if he had lost enough blood to die from; he did know however, that at any moment, he could possibly pass out from the subsequent loss of his body's life stream. If this was to happen, the end result would be deadly.

Terror gripped him immediately; as he was overcome by the severity of the current situation, panic struck his mind. Pull yourself together! the voice from within spoke. He began to kick and fight against the solid hold the iron chains had on him.

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